This is sorta a mix between two dreams, cause they're similar, and fits together. Actually it'll be nine dreams, cause they all fit!!
Mission of Malls
There was a purple store. Nothing but purple, black, or white clothing scattered within the shop. I enjoyed shopping there, walking here and there, looking at the sophisticated office clothes that the store generally contained. That was all, a purple store. So simple and sleek.
We had come for a day out in Downtown, not Vancouver Downtown, but somewhere nice, somewhere I've never been to before. The retro buildings stood tall and proud on the streets, and we moved from shop to shop, after having lunch at a small Chinese restaurant. There were three shops in particular that stuck in my mind. The purple store, of course, and two others, one selling leathered goods, and the other a violin shop, with lessons being conducted at the back of the store. We had walked in to the shop because of pure curiosity, wondering what violins they had, when we saw the children slewing away on their violins at the back. We watched the girl with the cello for a while, the instrument was bigger than she was.
The other store, I didn't like as much, it was filled with dead animals. But Mother insisted on going in. It didn't take any time for her to get out of the store though, she didn't like leather either.
We moved through Downtown and the shops got even more retro, the walls going from wood to pure bricks. A little store stood at the corner of a building, and we went in and bought a pair of pajamas for my friend. It was pink and grey. It turned out that it connected to a mall at the back. From there we moved on through to go to a dark store with hip hop style clothes, a sleek store with new electronics, and other ones that I couldn't even begin putting my finger on it. There was also a sidewalk sale, and so we browsed through those clothing too.
What made the trip uncanny was that I felt like I've been there before, but I knew it was no where I recognize. So, just like that, we moved forward, and right into robber break the window of a jewelery store and run with a handful of necklaces. I had witnessed a crime, and this was no small matter. I would be hunted down for it.
Soon after, I was left alone to make my way home, and taking the wrong bus had always been my forte. I looked carefully at the signs, and had memorized my journey to Downtown. It was going to be tricky, I thought, even before the man came up to me. He whispered in my ear that I had information for him, and I began to run.
I didn't have any information for the thug, and yet I did, all at the same time. In a way, I knew that I was in a dream, but I still had to give the guy the information. That robber, it hadn't been just any robber, he had been important, and my only way out of this mess was either for me to tell the guy the information, or for me to be exterminated. I didn't want to die, so I slowed my pace, allowing the man to catch up. For a robber-related mystery man, he was really slow!
I told what had happened, and he somehow seemed content. He didn't know what he was talking about, I thought with a sudden realization, he just wanted to know what I saw, just to cause trouble, to have that surge of adrenaline from an adventure that he'd never have. I felt sorry for him, for I knew, I've traveled many places in my dreams, and perhaps he was in a dream too.
In the end I got on the wrong bus, it took me to another part of Downtown. I figured it would be a long night, and so I walked into a record store, asking for shelter. The lady was very kind and set up a small bed at the back of the shop. She said she lived alone behind the store, and that if I needed anything, I was to call for her. It went dark the minute I put my head to my pillow.
In the morning, the lady gave me an envelope, it was from the school. It contained money and asked for me to go there. It would be a new school with new kids, but I'll be alright. I thanked the lady and made my way to the school.
On my way, I passed some people talking about Nixon as if he was still news, and as I passed city hall, I began to realize why I felt so uncanny. This was not my period of time. But I was still to make my way to school and enroll there, no matter what era it was. I stopped at a little soup shop for breakfast, and knew I would be late, but I really didn't care. I didn't know why, I was usually so punctual.
At the school, I proceeded through the grounds during recess, when all the kids were outside, and I made my way to the office. There, it was a quick meeting before I went to my first class: Computer Ed. The school was large, but fairly easy to navigate through when compared to Churchill. At the computer lab, which was included in the library, I had a better time looking at the books than learning about how to program CGI. But it seemed like the other kids were preoccupied as well.
During lunch, I kept in the library. They had a copy of the Mortal Instruments comics there, and I had been waiting for it for a long time. Though it wasn't my time era, it still contained the same books. I enjoyed the library, it was big and reminded me of home, where the libraries stood plenty.
I peered across the street during math, and realized there was another school there. They were our rivals, the boy beside me said, he was nice, and nice-looking. We proceeded to their school for a competition that day, and I became the underdog. My math skills exceeded all of theirs, and I felt proud and happy.
The boy offered me a ride home on his motorcycle, though he looked nothing like the motor cycle stereotypes I've seen. I accepted his offer with a smile, though I shouldn't have. Things like big thugs chasing me for information happened often, and I didn't want to get him involved. But it was too late. On our way home, we were chased. I told the boy to leave me and go, but he just accelerated his bike every time I suggested it. It was not going to happen.
Often I was chased, and I knew what the men wanted. They just walked to talk, but if I didn't know what they were talking about, they would kill me. I took that risk when I became one of the others, though, but the boy shouldn't have been in this.
In the end we got rid of the chasers, guess they weren't really urgent. He dropped me off at the back of my house, and I said my thank yous. He didn't know this wasn't my house, and I wasn't about to tell him either. He was a nice boy, he can't know about my life.
...
I woke up in a store, again. But it wasn't the same store, or the same mall for that matter, it was somewhere completely different, and I realize that I do very weird things in malls, they were like a magnetic field for me, and I am their charged victims. I stood up in the middle of a T-shirt store, selling clothes that were of my era, colourful and tacky, just like what my old friends used to wear. But that couldn't be, I was in a different time, and my friends are dead. They died in the sea that one mission, and I was the only one who had survived.
I ran through the mall. It was already opened, which means I was late for school. I grabbed an apple from a fruit stand without paying, but no one saw, and that was just my life. I couldn't go back to school, not yet, not now, I had to get a move on. To find the hat, that hat is my only way back to headquarters. As I ran, I wondered if there was some connection of "hat" and "headquarters". I'm the only person who can be so quirky after all I've seen. I had to find a locker, a workers locker, in the mall, and get the hat from there. They would have hid it well. Maybe the guys who were chasing us the day before would have given me a clue, but no matter now, I would find it.
First stop, the jewelery store. It was always hid there, which is the hardest place to get it out from. The jewelery store looked more like bank, and I search extensively, but no lockers what so ever. So I moved on to the next: a comic store. Flipping through the comics reminded me of my only day at school, and it made me sad to think that I would never live a normal life like the other kids there.
I had to keep searching, keep my mind off of my self-pity. A book store, many clothing stores, a TNT Chinese supermarket, an A and W, even a bowling alley and movie theatre, nothing, no lockers, any where. But I was mistaken, the last route I took, there they were, rows among rows of lockers, just standing there, and they reminded me of Churchill. All things reminded me of Churchill, there was even a boy I saw in a store that looked like Jonathan. But it was a life I would have to forget.
I moved through the lockers tentatively, pulling on every lock. Finally, one came loose, and there was a note in it: Go to the ice cream store. What?? that was at the entrance of which I first saw!!! I ran back as fast as I could, but it was too late, if you got the note, you were too stupid to find out, and there he was, walking away with the hat. I sat down, breathing hard. It felt like the time I went to Liverpool, how the smog got to your lungs and closed your wind pipes. But this wasn't England, I knew, but I didn't know where it was either. The only way was to move forward, and only then can you get somewhere.
A boat, I saw a boat deck just outside the rows of lockers, there was a glass door. Maybe that was my real clue. I began to run again, and found that I was right, one of the doors stood open when I got there. I ran through and boarded the first available ship from under the ship's belly, so I entered the suites, where no one will know I didn't belong.
Soon after my illeget boarding, the ship began to sail. This would take me there, I was sure of it, but again, I was mistaken. It sank. A warning light filled the rooms and a siren began to sound. At least I had the sense to move to the deck. By the time I got there, the ship was half in the water, and I knew I would have to jump, I've seen Titanic enough times. So I did. The shore was not long away, and I swam back quickly.
There stood stunned bystanders who just stared at me as I stood after my swim. I looked up, not at them, but at the horizon, and finally, after all this, saw what I was missing all along.
I treked through the small city, now that I've seen it, I knew it was small. The part of the city that I walked through was old and run down, with houses with only one floor to them. I thought that there might have been other clues, so I approached anything that I thought was suspicious, and in the end, nothing, just my paranoia kicking in. It was his fault, he made me like this.
I stopped after I made a false suspicion about a DVD store, and I went to the nearest restaurant for a bite. I was too hungry to proceed, "You would die if you didn't eat on these missions," he had said. The McDonald was filled with people, and though it wasn't my first choice of places to eat, I didn't complain.
I did feel better after a meal, though knew I would crash from the toxic effects of the junk food, which meant I had to keep moving and get there. It took less time than I thought, and once there, I moved to the station and boarded a train that rain across the sky, sort of like a SkyTrain. Enough of home, I snapped to myself, I would have to forget that life! But I couldn't I just couldn't. So I let the thoughts of home wash over me as the ceiling and sides of the train closed in like a collapsible and we moved moved over the sparking waters of the sea that I was just dunked in as we proceeded back to headquarters.
Wow, that was actually like five dreams in one!! And I made it into a mission, just like the one abuot the DVD shop!! OMG, stories do take a life of their own, I'll make this into a series then!
